You'll Never Know

by Katie Cross

  My shoulders slumped. There was a life lesson to write on a cake. A thousand rebuttals came to mind, but I stifled all of them. None of it was Dr. Martinez’s fault. It was mine. The heavy weight loomed large. Sometimes, it really sucked being the person who had to learn things the hard way. Perhaps I should forgive myself for this too, I thought, but the idea felt too heavy in the moment. I let it go and sank into the sadness instead.

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Fine…”

  Dr. Martinez pulled her glasses off her face. “Are you still hoping to run that marathon?”

  “No. I’ve given that up for this year. I just miss being able to move freely. These crutches are really annoying.”

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Rachelle. It’ll heal eventually, even if it’s not as fast as you want.”

  “Yeah. Me too. Well, thanks for looking at it. Want me to keep the boot on?”

  “For now, yes. “

  I managed a vague smile in response. After Dr. Martinez shuffled out with her clipboard under her arm, telling us her nurse would see us to the front desk, Mira stood up, eyebrows high in silent question, as if asking, You okay?

  With a sigh, I grabbed the crutches and slid off the chair.

  “Let’s go.”

  That night, I lay in bed, thinking about the binder.

  It sat underneath me, its siren song whirling over and over again in my head like cinnamon rolls. The sound was a mere hush in the background of my thoughts, really. A quiet whisper. That’s all I heard from it. But it seemed to thunder.

  Face me again, coward.

  If Janine truly wanted me to confront my past and forgive myself for things I still hated myself for, that would originate in the binder. All my secret lives were chronicled there. A list of boyfriends on page forty-two. The Hollywood crushes I used to drool over while eating Muddy Buddies and drinking an Orange Julius—Mom’s favorite drink. Pictures. Drawings. Letters to Lexie. Notes we’d passed back and forth in sixth grade.

  The idea of broaching that wall overwhelmed me.

  Because I don’t deserve it, I thought. Didn’t I deserve to lose the marathon? To have to fight, tooth and nail, to feel good about myself? Because I’d brought this all upon myself.

  Was there really another way?

  I shoved Janine’s challenge away. Tonight, it was too much to think about. Too much to broach. Instead, I sank into sleep, dreaming of macarons, and powdered sugar on my hands while I tied my tennis shoes, the sounds of the TV twining through it all like a soundtrack.

  Chapter 8

  Attractive

  “So?” Janine asked, a trailing question in her voice. “How did things go this last week?”

  I sank onto the couch, controlling the motion more with my legs than the crutches, and leaned back. Stories of macarons, car-ride conversations with Mira, and long nights contemplating and ignoring my past rushed to the forefront of my mind. Explaining seemed like too much work when I really hadn’t figured out anything, so I let it all float away.

  “Pretty good.”

  “Did you make any progress on learning who you are without roles?”

  My nose scrunched. “Not really. The whole you-are-still-worth-something-even-if-you-messed-up thing has me reeling.” My brow furrowed. “I’m not sure I was ready for that.”

  “For what?”

  “To forgive myself.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

  I shifted in my seat, attempting to find a spot that felt comfortable. “Yeah.”

  “Want to explain?”

  I blinked. Of course I didn’t. “I guess I just wasn’t ready.”

  She paused, no doubt waiting for more, but I didn’t offer it. “Meditation helps,” she said when the silence stretched too long. “If you do that sort of thing. So does journaling. Writing helps a lot, actually.”

  “Okay.”

  “Keep working on it. You’ll figure out something.”

  I wondered if she could detect the lack of certainty in my response. This whole thing was getting a bit too uncomfortable. I’d only shown up for this appointment because Bitsy had been my ride.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “In the meantime, I have an idea to work on your self-hatred.” She pointed to her toes, then elevated her feet off the floor. “My father always told me that I had weak ankles. Apparently I tripped a lot. We had gophers in our backyard, so I think that had more to do with it than my body structure, but that’s a different story.”

  She had great legs, actually. Her ankles were svelte, slipping into her heels like a model’s. Despite all my work, my calves still looked like bowls of lumpy gravy.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I grew up thinking there was something wrong with me. There wasn’t. As I said—gophers. It took me years to realize that my ankles weren’t only just fine, they were wonderful. They’re strong, just like my calves. They carry me everywhere. They hold up with heels. And because of them, I’ve been able to travel the world.”

  “They seem perfect to me.”

  Her nose wrinkled. “Isn’t it funny how easily we assign such words to other people but not ourselves? I digress. I want you to go through your body, one piece at a time. Tell me what you’re grateful for about it and what’s attractive about it.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “For example, my toes.” Her foot slipped free of the shoe. Five perfectly normal toes wiggled in the air. “They’re cute. Small. Slightly chubby but perfectly tailored to my foot shape. Because of them, I have greater balance when I walk, which takes me places.”

  She made them dance for a second longer, then tucked them back into her shoe. With a gesture of her hand, she motioned to me.

  “Your turn.”

  “We’re really going to talk about my toes?”

  “Why not?”

  Why? I tossed the hair out of my eyes.

  “I don’t see anything attractive in my body.”

  “Nothing?”

  “My hair is okay sometimes. But my ankles? No. I’ve never thought any part of my legs attractive. Why lie?”

  “It’s not lying.”

  “But…”

  She waited as my response trailed off, then died. How was I going to believe that every part of me was lovable and attractive? I’d spent the last year trying to perfect my body into being acceptable. Whenever I got there … there was always something I hadn’t noticed before. Extra skin. Cottage-cheese arms. Flabby butt. It seemed like being overweight never really went away.

  “Tell me something about your toes,” she said when the silence continued to swell in the room. “Anything.”

  I lifted my left foot and peered at my toes peeking out of my flip flop. “They’re normal?”

  “How are they attractive?”

  “Well … they aren’t hobbit toes.”

  She tilted her head back and laughed. “Non-hobbit toes are a plus. Tell me something about them that you’re grateful for.”

  “About my toes?”

  “Yep. Gratitude is one of our most powerful tools.”

  “Oookay. Well … I guess now, more than ever, I’m grateful that I can walk? Or will eventually be able to again.”

  She beamed. “Me too. Mobility is an underappreciated gift. Now your feet.”

  “You’re serious? We’re going to do every single body part?”

  “All the way to your hair. Every single one.”

  Feet, toes, fingers, wrists—those I could get around. But thighs? Stomach? Breasts? How on earth would I lie my way through those?

  “I am grateful for my feet because they wear shoes,” Janine said, tapping them together. “And I love to wear shoes. My closet is testament to that. They’re attractive feet, too. I love the shape of them.”

  This was getting absurd.

  I cleared my throat. “Uh, all right. I-I like my feet because sitting all day would be miserable and…” My voice brightened. “I love to run. Without my feet, I couldn’t run.”
/>   A smile illuminated her face. “And they’re attractive because?”

  “Gross. No feet are attractive.”

  Janine laughed. “Okay, that is the only one I will let slide. Now let’s talk about your ankles.”

  We ascended our way up to my dreaded thighs. My mouth turned to cotton. No way I could lie my way through this one.

  “Why are you grateful for your thighs? And how are they attractive?”

  I avoided glancing at them by sheer willpower. The only words that came to mind filled my cheeks with heat. Lumpy gravy. Cellulite. No gap. Nor did I want to admit that this conversation had been getting a little bit easier—at least being grateful had. Every response about why my body was attractive felt forced. But there were things to be grateful for.

  “I’m grateful my thighs can run.”

  “And they’re attractive because?”

  Another long silence prevailed. In vain, I cast about for something. My legs were less than half the size they used to be. Maybe even a third. But even then, they weren’t totally straight, were they? They weren’t tan.

  They weren’t bump-free.

  “I-I…”

  To my horror, tears filled my eyes. I blinked them back, mortified. Crying? Why was I crying about my thighs?

  “I can’t think of anything,” I snapped.

  “Nothing?”

  In shame, I shook my head. Was this what it had come to? Had I thought so little of myself that I couldn’t conjure one sincere, accepting thought about my own legs? Was the hatred really so strong?

  Yes.

  And it burned.

  “I see tears in your eyes, Rachelle,” Janine said, breaking the silence. “Can you tell me what you’re feeling?”

  “Overwhelmed.”

  “By what?”

  “How much I hate my body.”

  My nostrils flared in an attempt to draw in a deep, slow breath and keep the tears at bay. How would I ever battle out of this? How would I ever be able to look at my thighs and feel anything but disgust?

  “Why do you hate your body?” she asked gently.

  “Because it’s … it’s not perfect. I’ve tried so hard. I run so much. And it … it can’t ever just look right. It’s always wrong, no matter what I try.”

  “Could you run a marathon without your body?”

  I glanced up. “No.”

  “Could you hug Lexie without your body?”

  “No.”

  “Could you enjoy the way a hot bath feels at the end of a long day?”

  I barely heard my own whisper. “No.”

  “If you’re chasing perfection, you’ll chase it the rest of your life. It doesn’t exist. Even if you did somehow get the perfect body, you’d never recognize it as such. When we live our lives around roles and conditions, we never measure up. Think of it this way: if you lost all ability to move on your own tomorrow, would you have a different definition of perfection?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you think you’d appreciate the way your thighs moved? Crave them no matter what they looked like?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled in her off-center way again. “Yeah. You would. This is the power of gratitude. It takes our mindset off of what we don’t have and puts it on what we do have.”

  The simplicity took my breath away. Sure, Bitsy had always said be grateful for what you have and perfection isn’t real, but until that moment, I hadn’t appreciated it. Right then, I thought I saw understanding glimmering in the distance. Just a wisp, but something flickered out of the darkness.

  “I … I think I know what you mean.”

  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten. You’re still on the hook. Butt is next. Make it good. Then we’re moving into your waist, and I won’t take anything that’s not sincere.”

  By the time we made it through my body—even though I felt like a fraud the entire time—I was emotionally wrung out. Training for the marathon hadn’t ever made me so exhausted. No, this seeped deeper than my bones and all the way into my heart.

  “I know how hard that was for you, Rachelle,” Janine said once I finished. By the look in her eyes, I could tell she meant it. “But thank you. We can retrain our brains once we’ve learned a new skill. Time for my homework for you. I want you to write a letter to yourself.”

  “A letter?”

  “You can share it with me next week if you want, but you don’t have to. It can be just for you.”

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “I want it to be something that you read every morning and every evening.”

  “I’m going to forget.”

  “Not if it’s important to you.”

  “What is it supposed to say?”

  “Write down your own self-love and acceptance as if it’s already happening. Phrases like I am beautiful right now. Or I love myself just the way I am or I am happy with the person I am becoming.”

  “You want me to lie?”

  Her gaze tapered for a second, and I felt a flash of guilt. We had just spent an entire hour working through this. Did she have any other clients this difficult? She shook her head, any shred of judgment disappearing.

  “Put yourself in the position of wanting to believe it. Don’t you want to believe you’re beautiful? Don’t you want to love the person you’re becoming?”

  “Of course.”

  “The mind is an amazing thing. If you focus on something for seventeen seconds, your brain will start to find evidence of it. For example—you wake up, look in the mirror, and think, How did I get this overweight? I will never be happy. I will never love myself. I’m doomed to the life that I’m in now and I might as well accept it. Do that for seventeen seconds, and when you walk out of the bathroom, your brain is going to find proof that that’s true.”

  “That’s insane.”

  She smiled. “That’s powerful. Where you think, there you go. You may not believe in this yet, but I’m going to ask you to have some faith in me and try it.”

  “All right.”

  “Good luck with the letter. I look forward to your report next week.”

  The next morning, I stared at myself through the fog of the bathroom mirror.

  My hair hung in limp, dark strands around my face. I had a towel wrapped around my torso, a novelty I’d discovered only after I’d dropped below one hundred and eighty pounds. I held my right foot, boot free, off the ground. The hot, steamy shower had felt wonderful despite the rippling summer heat outside.

  “I can do it,” I murmured. “I can say something nice about myself.”

  Another long stretch of time passed before I felt the words rise in my throat and sit there.

  I have nice eyes.

  What did nice mean anyway? Kind? Not ugly? No one had ever said that I had kind eyes, and I figured that made sense. My mouth always got me in trouble. In fact, I probably hadn’t come across as kind much when I was overweight. I was probably too concerned with being right, or obnoxious, or overbearing.

  My brain started to wander, into memories of high school when I stood up for Lexie and myself against the cheerleaders. The teachers who wrote me off as inconsequential and stupid just because I was loud.

  “I was loud for a reason,” I muttered to the mirror. “I wasn’t stupid.”

  Roles. This time, the word didn’t seem so foreign. Being loud and proud had been my role. It’s who I had embodied all through high school. Then it all shifted the night I got raving drunk with Chris.

  What was my next role? Exerciser. Weight-loss guru.

  For some reason, the thoughts seemed to settle in my head better. It just … made more sense now. I’d thought that those things were what defined me, but they didn’t. Something defined me.

  I just wasn’t sure yet what it was.

  With a shake of my head, I turned away from the mirror and reached for the door handle, then I stopped.

  No.

  I turned, faced the mirror, and said, “I-I have … strong legs.” />
  My nostrils flared. I did have strong legs. Nothing compared to Megan’s, but strong nonetheless. That was something to go off of. “This is crazy,” I said, shaking my head. “This will never feel normal.”

  But even as I said the words, I felt a niggling doubt. Maybe, one day, it would feel normal. This time, I grabbed the door handle and pulled it open. When I turned back toward my room, Mom blocked my path. I reared to a stop. Her head jerked up, startled, eyes small in her thick face.

  “Oh,” she said. “Sorry. Didn’t see you there.”

  “No problem.”

  A tense moment passed while she attempted to sidestep out of my way, but I blithely slid aside instead. There wasn’t much room in the path. Not enough for both of us to wiggle by at the same time. Her cheeks reddened. She didn’t quite meet my eyes.

  “Three chins moving through here,” she quipped. “They take up more space than you’d think. Almost need a wheelbarrow.”

  With that, Mom disappeared into her bedroom. I stood rooted to the spot, my mind whirring. When had Mom started making fun of herself? Memories whipped through my mind, taking me by surprise. Mom on my birthday at twelve, calling herself a cow for eating half the cake—I polished off almost the other half. Eating an entire bowl of pasta, then cracking a joke about eating for three and not being pregnant.

  Always. She’d always made fun of herself.

  I sucked in a sharp breath, washed through with something heavy. Not disgust this time. Not even annoyance. Sadness. Pure and utter sadness. Only this time, it wasn’t just for me.

  Chapter 9

  Opportunity

  The next day, I left Sophia’s office with a recipe for petit fours she wanted me to attempt. The paper wrinkled in my free hand. The close proximity of things in the prep room—and my skills with using only the crutch on my right side—gave me a free hand these days. A little piece of freedom that I appreciated more with every passing day.

  I came to a dead stop just inside the preparation room.

  Neatly stacked boxes filled the far counter.

  A head of blond hair appeared just over a tall cardboard box. The delivery boy from a few weeks ago.

  “Hello, William!” Sophia called from behind me. She waved. “Great to see you again.”